August 22, 1953 The First Lap, As Good as Gold, Beautiful Mountains and Tremendous Wastelands

 

 

Dear Mother & Daddy,

"The first lap of our trip is over and we're settled comfortably in a hotel until Monday.  As soon as we got here B called the steamship office again and he then had to go down with our tickets and check with the agent to be sure everything was straight.  We can board ship 1:00 Monday afternoon and the ship is scheduled to sail at 3:00.  They started loading the ship today so it should sail on time.  We'll probably go to a park tomorrow and the day will be gone before we know it.  We are awfully tired right now but hope to catch up with our rest once we get on the ship.  It is 8:00 now and the children are already asleep.  There is a three hour difference in time so our day has been that much longer than usual.  Actually there is only a 2 hr. difference but Seattle is on standard time & it adds an hour.

 Our plane trip was something I will never forget and something I cannot describe.  It was so easy and smooth and the children were as good as gold.  Toni and Watty drove us to Chicago in their car and we left Normal about 9:00 last night (Fri.).  We had plenty of time to walk around and eat before we got on the plane at 2:00 A.M. The children had taken long naps and were good and bright eyed when the plane took off.  They fell asleep before long and slept till far into the morning.  We made three stops--Minneapolis, Billings, Montana & Spokane.  There were about 30 minutes each stop and we could get out of the plane and walk or eat--always a nice cafe and waiting room.  The mountains were so beautiful and the wastelands so tremendous.  Farm houses were so far apart and what few cows or horses we saw looked like tiny ants.  We were way up in the clouds.

DC-4, 1953 image courtesy of www.usmm.org

It was good to have your letter.  Take good care of yourselves and write us lots about yourselves.  We will write you as soon as we get to Tokyo but it will be quite a while."

                             Lots and lots of love,

                                     Bonnie

NOTE:   Aside from Bonnie's high school flight in the small private plane that she and her friends "borrowed"( pictured on the blog's homepage),  I assume the trip to Seattle was my parents' first commercial flight and probably the one that began their life-long love of flying.